Outdoor retailer REI was hoping to capitalize on an upswell of a public goodwill over its decision to close stores on Black Friday by offering up its chief executive for a Reddit AMA.

Instead, CEO Jerry Stritzke was confronted with a throng of angry self-described current and former employees demanding an explanation for the company's purportedly distorted emphasis on selling memberships and punishing otherwise accomplished workers who don't meet quotas.

But the lighthearted fun ended when a user named anonemp posted a long-winded account of a personal struggle to keep a steady flow of membership sales while management slashed hours, denied a promotion and seemed to ignore accomplishments in every other area.

"I fully understand the need to hold employees to a high standard, but why is the approach so unbalanced?" anonemp wrote. "How is it in the best interest of the co-op to focus so exclusively on a performance metric that has no direct benefit for customers who are already members?"

REI operates as a cooperative, so it's technically owned by member customers who pay a one-time, annual or monthly fee in exchange for product discounts and special deals.

Image: screenshot

Apparently, anonemp's criticism hit on a sore subject, and others claiming to have worked at REI began to pile on with similar complaints. The post eventually racked up 5,855 up-votes — eclipsing even Stritzke's original announcement the AMA at 4,154.

Image: screenshot

Stritzke initially passed over the questions for some lighter fare, then eventually ducked out without answering. He returned later Tuesday night to promise a long response the next morning, which he then delivered on.

"I have to admit the emphasis on membership sales was a surprise to me when I joined the co-op two years ago," he wrote. "I feel like your story represents a measure of individual performance taken to an extreme and I am committed to understanding what happened."

Reddit AMAs are always a dodgy prospect for the sanitized message-controlled world of corporate public relations. As the name implies, the conversation can lead literally anywhere. While it's usually simple enough for whoever's in the hot seat to ignore unwelcome questions, Reddit's democratic up-voting system makes some impossible to dismiss.

Earlier this year, an AMA with Nissan took a turn for the worse when users accused the brand of planting its own PR-approved questions — a huge faux pas in any AMA. And reviled Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli didn't do his tattered image any favors with an AMA in which he told a Redditor to "kiss my ass" and suggested that anyone who wants to date him could "get in line."

Unfortunately for the outdoor equipment giant, word of its treatment of employees seems to have now eclipsed the initial wave of good feelings from its announcement that it would give workers a holiday break on Black Friday.

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